Choose a way to safeguard your future…

Here are five interesting facts comparing property investment and stock markets:

1

If you had invested £75 per week into the world stock market fund through your pension in 1987, you would have more than £1million today.

2

Since 1987, the UK house price index has risen 665% whereas the world stock market has risen 1,540%.

3

Property is a fixed income investment, which means the property value moves in the opposite direction to interest rates.

4

You pay an additional 8% Capital Gains Tax on second properties.

5

You can buy the world equity fund in tax-free accounts such as an ISA and/or pension.

The seeds of most outdoor spring-sown crops won’t germinate until the soil has warmed up to 7C, so be patient or start them off indoors.

Start chitting potatoes.

Have you pruned your shrub roses? It’s time to cut them back and cut out old or diseased stems.

You can help your soil heat up in the veg patch by using cloches. This can be as simple as a plastic bottle cut in half.

Early March is the time to prune summer and autumn flowering clematis.

Lift and divide hostas before they come into leaf.

Summer flowering shrubs, such as fuchsia, spiraea, perovskia, lavatera, buddleja, and deciduous ceanothus, like ‘Gloire de Versailles’, usually flower on new growth, so a good chop now will stimulate plenty of this.

Mulch shrub beds with well-rotted manure or compost organic matter to retain moisture and reduce weeds.

Lift and divide summer flowering perennials such as rudbeckia, hemerocallis, aster and heleniums.